What Home Means to Me Now

Home used to be
an address written in blue ink
on the first page of a school notebook,
a line that tethered me
to a street,
a gate,
a door that creaked in the monsoon.

It was the smell of soaked earth
rising from the courtyard
like a quiet prayer.
It was a brass bell at dusk,
its sound folding the day
into something softer.

Back then,
home was a geography.
A place the body could point to.
A map with a red circle
that said
here.

But time has a way
of rearranging furniture inside the soul.

Walls fell.
Cities changed.
The gate rusted in memory.
The bell stopped ringing.

And I found myself standing
under unfamiliar skies,
carrying fragments—
a chipped cup of laughter,
a handful of dust from a courtyard
that may no longer exist.

For a while
I mistook longing for belonging.
I tried to build home
out of nostalgia,
brick by fragile brick.

But nostalgia is a monsoon cloud—
heavy,
dramatic,
and impossible to live inside.

Now,
home is quieter.

It begins
in the breath.

In the small inhale
before I answer a difficult question.
In the pause
between heartbeat and thought.

Home is the way my chest rises
when dawn stretches
like a cat across the horizon.

It is not a structure.
It is a returning.

I have learned
that I carry doorways within me.
Invisible thresholds
I cross when I forgive someone
or when I finally forgive myself.

Home is the river
that does not ask
which bank I slept on last night.
It only asks
if I am willing to flow.

Sometimes I find it
in the kitchen light
before anyone else wakes—
that gentle amber halo
holding silence
like a sacred bowl.

Sometimes it finds me
on a crowded road
when a stranger smiles
and something ancient recognizes
something ancient.

A flicker.
A warmth.
A reminder
that we are all
walking each other home.

Home now
is less about walls
and more about weather.

It is the climate
of my inner sky.

If storms gather—
anger, fear, doubt—
I do not abandon the landscape.
I sit beneath the thunder
and listen.

Even lightning
belongs to the sky.

Even grief
belongs to the heart.

I have stopped trying
to exile parts of myself
for the sake of neatness.

The cracked tiles,
the unswept corners,
the room where regret sleeps—
they are not intruders.
They are tenants.

And I,
at last,
am a kinder landlord.

There was a time
I believed home required permanence.
That roots must sink
deep and unmoving
into a single patch of earth.

But the banyan tree
teaches otherwise.

It sends roots
down from branches,
touching ground
in many places at once.

It is both anchored
and wandering.

So am I.

Home is the conversation
that does not exhaust me.
The silence
that does not threaten me.

It is the ability
to sit alone
without feeling
abandoned.

I used to fear
emptiness.

Now I see
it is simply
space.

And space
is where galaxies are born.

When I lie under the night sky
and watch the stars tremble
in their distant fires,
I feel a widening—

a recognition
that this body
is made of the same
ancient dust
as those luminous spirals.

The cosmos does not carry
a street address.
Yet it belongs to itself
completely.

Perhaps that is the secret.

Home is not ownership.
It is intimacy.

An unguarded closeness
with whatever is present.

The creak in my knees
as I climb stairs.
The gray threading my hair.
The lines around my eyes
that map
every laugh
and every loss.

This body—
temporary, miraculous—
has become a small house
I am learning to cherish.

I sweep it with breath.
I open its windows with gratitude.
I light its corners
with awareness.

Home now
is the courage
to inhabit myself fully.

Not the curated version,
not the polished guest room,
but the entire dwelling—
basement to attic,
shadow to skylight.

It is the realization
that I do not need
to earn my own belonging.

The earth never asked the river
to justify its flow.

The moon does not apologize
for its phases.

Why then
should I?

When I sit with a friend
and words fall away,
leaving only presence,
I feel it—

that quiet hum
beneath conversation.

A shared gravity.

Two constellations
recognizing
they are part of the same sky.

Home is not always gentle.

Sometimes it arrives
as discomfort—
a restlessness
that refuses to let me shrink.

It pushes me
toward truer alignments,
like tectonic plates
shifting beneath continents.

There are tremors.
There is upheaval.

But mountains rise
from such friction.

And I have learned
that growth
is another word for relocation.

Home expands
as I expand.

It includes the child
who once believed
everything would last forever.

It includes the adult
who knows
nothing does.

It includes the quiet witness
who stands behind both,
watching time
like waves
arriving and retreating
from the same eternal shore.

If I close my eyes now
and ask,
where is home?

The answer does not point outward.

It spreads inward
like dawn across a valley.

Home is the awareness
that I am never truly separate
from what I seek.

It is the understanding
that belonging
is not granted by others
but uncovered
like a spring beneath rock.

Home means
being at peace
with becoming.

It means trusting
that even when I feel lost,
I am simply walking
through another room
of a house
vast as the universe.

And perhaps
that is what home means to me now—

not a fixed place
but a living field of presence.

A hearth I tend
with attention.

A sky I inhabit
with wonder.

A quiet center
that remains
even as seasons turn,
even as loved ones depart,
even as the body
loosens its hold
on certainty.

Home is this breath.

This moment.

This fragile, radiant awareness
that I am here—

woven of earth and starlight,
river and root,
memory and possibility—

and that wherever I stand
with an open heart,

the universe
stands with me.